Following a four-month review of the 2007 version 4.0 standard, the American Society for Automation in Pharmacy (ASAP) has announced the release of version 4.1 of its prescription-monitoring standard.
Stakeholders taking part in the updating process included a number of states with operational prescription-monitoring programs, national drug chains and independents, and pharmacy system vendors. The goal, according to ASAP, was to improve the quality of information reported to the states, while at the same time not increasing the complexity to report controlled substances dispensed. Also, preserving backward compatibility with version 4.0 that was published in 2007 was an overriding priority of the workgroup. Currently 33 states have prescription-monitoring programs, where the ASAP standard is used, with several more scheduled to implement such a program using the ASAP standard.

Prescription-monitoring programs are implemented to detect fraud, diversion of controlled substances, and potential abuse of these drugs.

The latest release includes provision for capturing information from electronic prescriptions for tracking purposes, once e-prescribing is allowed for controlled substances. The version 4.1 is available on the ASAP Web site at asapnet.org.